I wrote a line in a song about a muse once that talked about how the greatest feat of strength I could ever manage would be to bend her lips into a smile. It takes work and effort to pull the corners of your mouth up into a display of happiness, while the gravity of life fights to keep you feeling flat. The energy it takes to maintain a smile is why joy dissolves as quickly as a rainbow after a storm, while pain lingers on the ground in puddles that leave a trail of footprints for miles.
These feelings become even more complicated when family becomes involved, which I ascribe to our simplistic conventions of thought. We (as a society) tell ourselves that family is everything, and that we must love our families because they are the people closest to us. But does unconditional love for someone simply because they share more of our genes make any more sense than rooting for a sports team just because they were the closest one to the town where you grew up?
"Plastic Roses" dives into these issues, and about how some of the 'gifts' we are given by our upbringing are destined to be with us forever, much like a plastic ornament that won't decompose until long after we are gone. We can shove them in a closet, or give them away, but in the back of our mind we know they are still out there waiting for us to come back upon that happenstance.
Looking back on life explains the fitting motif of this song, whose bits of lead guitar borrow a feeling from "Every Rose Has Its Thorn", or at least that entire era of rock. They were around at the right time, after all. The song's verses are chapters of the story, each showing a new scene in which pain is transferred from one person to another, as if Isaac Newton actually discovered the true scientific reality is that pain is energy, and as such can never be destroyed. We pass it on to others to alleviate our own suffering, because we aren't always strong or wise enough to suffer for those we are supposed to love.
That is made clear in the opening scene, set at a wedding, where we are reminded that love really is a choice. Oh, it might feel inevitable, or a matter of fate, but it's something we decide to embrace every day. When you think about it, that actually makes it more special. If love was part of some divine plan, all we would be doing is following a path set out for us, riding the moving sidewalk with all the purpose and direction that entails. But if we have to choose to love, and every day we make that same decision, it's a constant reaffirmation that out of the myriad possibilities for how the universe can unfold, this is the one we want to explore.
Looking at things from that perspective makes family dynamics even sadder when they fall apart. I have family I am more or less dead to, and in their absence I have often thought about whether or not I'm supposed to feel bad about how things have turned out. In the end, I came to the realization that any kind of relationship is reciprocal. When someone doesn't show you love, no, you shouldn't feel bad about building a life that can support itself without them.
This is where developing as a blues singer is put to startling effect. VK's voice shifts from resignation to anger, from crooning to belting, all the while finding ways to pierce our armor. The sad stories seep in around the unsealed edges, while the fire inside is able to burn straight through the metal plate that protects our heart. The lead guitar weeps, but the rhythm builds into a thunder of pent up emotions, a powerful storm striking from above.
It's rare for a song to give us so much to think about, so many questions we can ask ourselves. That's one of the things that separates good songs from great ones.
So if "Plastic Roses" has VK Lynne dipping a bit into the sound of glam, it's because she's making herself up to show that the pain of the past might always be there, but in time we can paint over it so others will never see, and perhaps the memory can occasionally be forgotten when we look in the mirror. Those artificial reminders will never die, but they can be redefined.
Just so long as we don't pass them off as a Valentine's Day gift, but that's a story for another day.
"Plastic Roses" releases on February 15th. Pre-save it here!
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